


The Aerialist

by charade



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Canon Event Triggers Apply, Extended Metaphors, Gen, Theater and Circus Imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:21:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26454064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charade/pseuds/charade
Summary: There is something universal about being a showman. From boardrooms to boardwalks, if you look past the glamours and smoke. He was born to hold up the rigging, to shift the backgrounds, to set and reset the stage, but there is oh so much you can learn, watching from the wings.Or -- The lead up through Tokyo Ghoul’s opening act as told through an extended theater and circus metaphor from the point of view of the character setting it all in motion.
Kudos: 3





	The Aerialist

There are big theaters in the big cities, clean suits, clean buildings, clean clients — a clean front for all the well off people with their well off lives. It's theater on ice, cool and polished, skating on the surface.

Always trying to scrub away the genealogy of it, the blood, the filth, the ancient realities of the traveling shows. Actors born in the sun forget that their trade was born in the shadows. Always covering up centuries of carrying the brand of undesirable and outsider. A shiny throne propped up on a pile of rot.

He understands their temptation. He understands his lessons well.

(He’s a star pupil. Be careful what you wish for.)

There is something universal about being a showman. From boardrooms to boardwalks, if you look past the glamours and smoke. He was born to hold up the rigging, to shift the backgrounds, to set and reset the stage, but there is oh so much you can learn, watching from the wings.

He wears his costumes, takes his roles. Bit parts only there to smuggle props on and off the stage, to fill in the gaps in a sloppily written script.Born among the ballastand columns, adept with the props and make up carts, he knows the way the eyes of the actors travel, the paths they walk, the lines they say. He knows the blood and guts and insides of each performance too well, so is it any wonder he seeks out a place where that carnage is on display?

The carnival is everything the big shiny theaters pretend not to be. Garish instead of glossy, dirty and raw. Stained bleachers instead of plush and numbered seats, exposed rigging and beams and stagehands in full costume bringing sets in and out with the lights up and tinny music playing. The tight controls of mechanical pistons and expensive cranes swapped out for the chaos and risk of taut rope and bowline knots.

—

The clown is amused, when he sneaks in through the back of the traveling show, reading him more than the resume he presents, and offers him a spot more out of curiosity than for his long list of skills and connections. The core cast here is small, and they lounge with a languidness the best of actors would envy. They trade wine and secrets and costumes, brush things off with a shrug and raised eyebrow that would grind more finished theater to a halt for a season.

A carnival can set up anywhere. In auditoriums and side streets, on rooftops and abandoned buildings.

“Wherever and whenever the show is, Souta, dear.”

There is no hum and drum here, no set tasks and rote line readings. Names and occupations are as adaptable as a contortionist is nimble, as quick as fire and as malleable as the unset latex of a mask.

You wouldn’t know it from the spectacle, how few there are, at the end of each performance, spilling wine and having their fill of the leftover carnage.

“There are always people willing to run away to join the circus,” the painted man says, casually lounging with a boa around his neck. “One day, maybe you’ll meet the old ringmaster. Quite a knack for recruitment, that one.”

He knows the old ringmaster, of course, and Nico knows he knows, but all the worlds a stage, and they are merely the players that know that.

“You have a production for us,” the mask maker says, a statement rather than a question.

He does, of course he does. It would be stupid to wander back here without one. That anyone who’d been watching and learning show business for as long as he had somehow wouldn’t have an opus of their own was a testament to how rancid this whole business could be.

Of course he has a production in mind. Sets and costumes and aerials and exotic animals and a big closing number where it all came together in a dragon of flesh and bodies twisting around the whole arena. But it would take years to set up such a show, even if he stole everything from the back door of the fanciest theater in town.

But he can tell them all about the opening act.

—

She’s beautiful, his aerialist, the way she floats along red silk scarves. He’s hardly the first to try to cast her for a role, far from the only one. The biggest shows in town were after her. And no wonder. She’s the perfect cast.

Of course, the part is written for her. She’s as vain as any diva, but dedicated in her rehearsal. (It helps that she doesn’t know yet what she’s rehearsing for. That’s the trick, but show business is all just tricks, in the end.)

Ribbons of red wrap themselves around poles and lift her up and up, spotlights glinting off sequins of ruby and splashes of crimson on white. This is the part where he drops the music so the peals of her laughter can stretch into the cheap seats.

It’s the same performance, night after night, a tale as old as time — a coquettish girl and a sly smile and ‘ _can I get a volunteer from the audience?_ ’ It’s a simple enough dance to build the circus tent around.

_Step up, step up, ladies and gentlemen, tonight is the final showing. Closing night comes with a special twist. It’s the grand finale, the end of the beginning._

Give it your all, won’t you, _prima donna?_

—

Once upon a time, someone put on a play set in a garden. In a cramped and dark shop someone cut and dyed each silk petal and wrapped each wire with cloth. Sweaty stage hands in old clothes attached dozens of artificial bouquets to lattices and lattices to rigs. Made a carpet into moss soft enough for a stage fall. Perhaps the production was a massive success. Perhaps it made more than enough to cover the cost of all the painted flowers, enough for the box office to coast for seasons and seasons. Perhaps it brought the audience to tears. Perhaps it was even good. Even beautiful.

When the play was over, all the flowers were sent backstage, into storage, into the guts of the theater the audience never sees. Yellowing slightly, maybe, but never wilting, even without sunlight. Even without stage lights.

It was about a daring rescue of a maiden. It was about a fairy grove where no one ever grew up. It was about a knight who found a dragon’s cave and saved the world. It was about two lovers who ran away together and lived happily ever after.

It was about many things, because he’d always been revising the script, rearranging the set, and handing out new stage directions.

It was about a monster. It was about a man. It was about an aerialist dancing on red silk scarves. It was a tragedy. It was a comedy. You should laugh.

—

She spins and swirls, making a mockery of gravity and any other laws that dare get in the way of her performance. The light is set at the perfect glow, making crystalline halos in the air, casting the illusion of precious stones out of a spray of liquid. She twists her silk around and around, effortlessly, like she was born for this dance.

Maybe she was.

She plays her role with grace and fervor, with passion and an intensity that leaves the audience transfixed.

She is alluring — the very concept of allure.

Red strands wrapped in precise patterns, up and around, tracing the curves of her body, then rippling out through the air. It’s not timed to the music, the music is timed to her, to every movement, every reach, every bend.

—

Did you know, underneath the opera house in Paris, there is a lake? A dark cavern, lit by candle and torch, under the brightly covered stage, and a boatman down in the dark ferrying sets instead of souls.

There is a lot they don’t show you, that’s kind of the point. A stage and lights and your attention fixed on exactly what it's meant to during and after the show — a nice lined red carpet, paparazzi and marketing. It’s all a magic trick. Follow my hand and miss the moment the prop is switched out, the way the trap door opens and drops the pretty lady down under the stage where all the levers and pulleys and mechanical parts create the illusion you were meant to see.

Someone has to spend the entire show under there, just waiting for the exact moments, the exact cue to release a rope and let something fall.

_There’s a special twist for closing night, just like the promotion said._

Look how she twists, too, twists her silks around and around as if she’s unaware that a spider ought never wrap its web around itself.

He was born to stand backstage, to hold up the rigging, to carefully latch the battens and beams and wait for just the right moment to let them go.

Maybe this is the role he was born for, too.

He’s been watching from the back all this time, but the circus has taught him well, and this time, he’s in full costume.

It’s almost time to step on stage.

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks go to the person who suggested and requested something with Furuta, the first chapter of TG, and circus imagery.


End file.
